Robert R. Mohr

Robert R. Mohr

“MIT is a great place,” says Bob Mohr. “I got a wonderful education and have friendships with students who have been my friends for 35 years. It was both an outstanding academic experience and fraternity experience. It couldn’t have been better.”

It is why, he says, he recently made a major pledge to the Robert R. Mohr Family Scholarship Fund, which he had established previously. “MIT did so much for me,” he says. “I feel like I wanted to do something in return.”

A serial entrepreneur, Mohr graduated from the Institute with a bachelor’s degree in management in 1972. He began his career as a computer programmer at Fraternal Systems in Waltham, MA, a company that automated the record keeping for national fraternities. Several years later, it became Epsilon Data Management, and he became regional sales manager. In 1978, Mohr cofounded Direct Response Group in Dallas, a direct-marketing company for big corporations, which he sold to Omnicom, the world’s largest advertising agency, in 1985. At Omnicom, he served as CEO until 1992, when he left to launch DMDA, a direct-marketing company that in 1997 bought Epsilon–the company where Mohr had begun his career 25 years earlier. In 2001, he sold Epsilon and began a venture capital company, BMohr Ventures.

Mohr sails with friends every summer. Last July, he and four friends sailed the Adriatic coast in Croatia. Together they have cruised the Baltic, Adriatic, and Mediterranean Seas. He also enjoys travel, golf, and, of course, starting companies.

“I’ve met some of the kids who have been able to go to MIT by virtue of a scholarship that I’ve given,” he says. “They’re just so bright, and they work so hard. Being able to fund an education like this is exciting. These kids go off and do change the world. I have the sense that they can just do anything. I see my money at work in these young people before me, and it’s just startling.”

Mohr’s dream is that his gifts “will one day fund a Nobel laureate.” He says, “That would be wonderful.”